


What Lies Behind a Faceless' Mask?

by shadowshrike



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Child Death, Fireside Story, Gen, Horror, Nohrian Lore, Pregnant Mother Death, scary story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 11:02:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12480096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowshrike/pseuds/shadowshrike
Summary: Let me tell you a story about where the Faceless come from.





	What Lies Behind a Faceless' Mask?

**Author's Note:**

> A fireside horror story written for an FE RP contest several months ago, meant to be read aloud as if told in the Nohrian camp. Although I was able to get it down to the 1000 word limit, I never submitted it due to the graphic nature of the tale. I thought it might make a nice Halloween short instead!

When I was a young boy, bandits destroyed my parents’ modest living as bakers in Windmire. Left with nothing but our clothes and the rations we could scavenge from the wreckage, we journeyed north. Through icy storms, we trudged into lands where the howling of wolfskin shook our bones. It was on the sixth night, when my father offered my younger brother the last crumbs of our bread, that we finally found it: a village.

We did not know who they were or how they had built civilization in such a desolate place, but empty bellies did not have the luxury of questions. They welcomed us with warm smiles. A baker and his boys were a perfect addition, they said, a bountiful harvest had left them with too much work for too few hands. We could build a new life, far from the troubles of the city.

And we did. My brother and I laughed and played with the village children as we never had in Windmire. The people were friendly and kind. They let us run through the streets and called my little brother “a blessing” as they pressed sweets into his tiny hands.

“Daddy, I want to stay here forever,” he told us at dinner one night.

“Good,” my father answered. “That is the future I want for you, too.”

They both smiled, and I went to bed happier than I had ever been.

The next morning, when I woke, they were gone. Off to the fields, no doubt, to get first crack at the latest crop. I dashed out door to follow, ignoring my pregnant mother calling me to stay.

I raced past the empty dirt roads and town square until I finally saw it from the top of a hill: the wheat fields where my brother and father had surely gone. But it wasn’t the two of them I saw. Dozens of adults gathered among the tall grasses, each with a small child at their side. It seemed as if the entire town had gathered in a festival I’d been told nothing about.

“Please, come home!” my mother pleaded from the base of the hill. “That isn’t for you, dear.”

My tiny voice cracked. “You knew they came here without me and you won’t let me even watch? I’m going!”

I rolled down the hill and into the grass as my mother cried out to stop me. She would never catch me in the wheat, I thought, and dove into the nearest patch I could find. Ducking, weaving, and swerving until…

THUD.

I tripped and fell. Glaring at my treacherous feet, I saw what had halted my rapid escape: a chain. One tied to the wrists of a girl my brother’s age, who was now crying. My chest squeezed. What did she do to make the villagers shackle her like a criminal?

It was the town blacksmith who dragged her to her feet.

“Who do you belong to?” he snapped, a furious hand snatching at me.

“I-I am the baker’s son,” I stammered. “I-I’m sorry sir. I’ll go!”

I scrambled into the wheat before he could grab me. From my periphery, I saw the girl trip over his extended arm and another child fell with her. A second child? What was happening here? My heart beat in my throat as I ran, no longer caring to find my family. I just wanted to go home.

But I had gotten lost. Without warning, I burst into another clearing. A ring of children bound together greeted me, their faces covered in eerie iron masks. And from the corner of my eye, I saw a glint of metal.

It was my father, drawing a bloody sword from the chest of my baby brother.

I screamed. I  _ screamed _  until my throat burned with bile and my mouth filled with the taste of copper.

The adults surrounding the children didn’t hear my cry. They watched as their little ones fell by their own doing. The manacles on dead bodies dragged down whimpering children who still lived. The last wail ended, one of the parents spoke. “Why isn’t it working?”

“Someone didn’t sacrifice their youngest,” another accused.

“It must be them!” a third yelled, rounding on my father. “ _ You _ ! What did you do?”

“I swear, he only has an older brother! My wife will be having another soon but…” Something gleamed in my father’s eyes, and only then did I realize that my mother, heavy with child, had found him before me. He turned towards her with his sword raised.

“...I will correct my error.”

In a single stroke, his blade plunged through her belly. My mother and her unborn child collapsed to the earth beside the others, their blood turning the soil an ugly black.

“Gods of the earth, heed our sacrifice!”

A roar quaked the dirt beneath my feet. My knees gave way. I thought I was sure to be swallowed by the maw of an angry dragon.

Instead, I saw the children rise once again, not as the sweet-faced boys and girls they had once been, but as hulking, masked monsters. Metal shrieked and snapped around their distorted limbs. They ripped their murderers’ heads from their shoulders and crushed their skulls in giant fists. Grown men and women popped like overstuffed mosquitos. My father tried to run from the carnage, only to see his unborn daughter tear from her mother’s womb, her half-formed face atop an enraged titan his final sight.

At last coming to my senses, I ran. I ran as far and fast as my legs could take me, past the village, back into the icy mountains from where we had come. The earth-shattering cries of those faceless demons behind me cowed even the wolfskin into silence. Exhausted and afraid, I collapsed on the mountainside. If it were not for this troupe of passing entertainers, I never would have survived.

And  _ that _  boys and girls, is how I know what lies beneath the masks of the Faceless.


End file.
